Embodiments of the present invention generally relate to data management, and more particularly relate to an installed base data hub for centrally managing information about the installed customer base of a business or enterprise.
A data hub, or master data management (“MDM”) solution, is a collection of software and/or hardware components that enables a business or enterprise (i.e., source enterprise) to maintain a single, “master” source of data that is accessible across multiple, heterogeneous information management systems. Currently, software vendors such as Oracle Corporation and IBM offer two types of data hubs: a “Customer” hub and a “Product” hub. These hubs provide a centralized view of a source enterprise's customer and product data respectively. However, the software industry has thus far failed to provide a solution for centrally managing the intersection of information between customers and products—in other words, the installed customer base.
The management of installed base data has become increasingly important in recent years as companies have moved to out-sourcing various customer-related business functions (e.g., product service, sales, etc.) to third-party partners. In many instances, these partners rely on installed base information to carry out their jobs. For example, a product manufacturer may employ a number of external contractors to provide warranty service for the different types and configurations of products that it sells. The contractors may, in turn, employ a number of subcontractors to provide service for specific subcomponents of a product. Each contractor or subcontractor in this multi-tiered network needs access to consistent and up-to-date installed base information (e.g., customer names, addresses, warranty terms, part/model/serial numbers of products sold/deployed/installed, etc.) to properly service the manufacturer's customers.
A manufacturer may also work with a number of reselling partners to sell its products through various retail channels. In this case, the reselling partners may wish to leverage installed base information to accurately identify the demographics of the manufacturer's installed customer base and target marketing and/or up-selling campaigns accordingly.
To address the foregoing needs, many external partners maintain a mirrored copy of a manufacturer's installed base data in their own information management systems. However, this approach is problematic for several reasons. First, it is inefficient because it doubles the amount of processing and memory resources required to maintain a single set of data (i.e., the installed base data). Second, it is cumbersome because it requires a partner to synchronize it's mirrored installed base data with the manufacturer's master data on a periodic basis. Even with frequent synchronizations, there may be situations where the partner's mirrored data is stale, possibly leading to processing errors and a degraded quality of service to customers.
Another solution is to create a proprietary, point-to-point interface between the information management systems of a partner and manufacturer. For instance, the partner and manufacturer may contract with a developer to develop a custom interface that will enable their systems to intercommunicate. Unfortunately, the creation of custom interfaces is generally a slow process as the developer must design and test the interface for the specific systems being connected. Such interfaces are also fragile, in that modifications to either system (e.g., updating versions of software) may break the communication path until such time as modifications to the interface are made. Further, a point-to-point interface is specific to the particular partner for which it is developed, and thus cannot be leveraged by all external partners interested in accessing and updating the manufacturer's installed base data.